


you got a death wish, child

by NeverNooitNiet



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Malcolm Bright Gets a Hug, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27622567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverNooitNiet/pseuds/NeverNooitNiet
Summary: Malcolm Bright is missing, presumed dead for five weeks. Until he isn't.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell, Malcolm Bright & Edrisa Tanaka, Malcolm Bright & JT Tarmel
Comments: 57
Kudos: 205





	1. JT

JT flicked his gaze upwards to Gil, very deliberately not staring at the square-framed photograph that now occupied a corner of his desk. The jaunty angle, the slightly nauseous smile, the suit that had probably cost more than JT’s entire life savings— poor, dead Malcolm Bright stared up at him from that frame with those eerily pale eyes, in a way that JT couldn’t help but feel was more than slightly accusatory. 

The big, tough guy part of JT, the part that had mocked every aspect of Bright’s life and questioned openly whether they should really be letting some psycho’s son consult, was sort of annoyed. You’d think he was some kind of saint or martyr half the time. He’d seen Dani, with a little passport-sized photo of him in her wallet. He wouldn’t put it past Edrisa to have constructed a full-on shrine. The… idolatry of it all pissed JT off. Why did Bright’s death mean they should pretend he was perfect? He hadn’t been. He’d been a broken fucking mess of a person, and that had been the _point_ of him. 

And then there was the other part of JT, which he was frantically trying to tamp down, which felt like shit for even thinking that sort of thing, which felt like shit for how he’d treated Bright half the time, which… missed him, in the way that he might miss a hyperactive dog. If the dog had PTSD. 

He should have told Bright his name. 

He should have found him. 

JT looked back at the photo, Bright’s smile and sharp suit, at how young he looked, and tried very hard not to think of another set of photographs, of blood-stained Polaroids and the blood-stained Bright they’d shown, the gash in his throat and the red all down his front, ruining that nice suit. The way Bright’s corpse had been slumped, still duct-taped to a chair.

Even the unmarked envelope the Polaroids had come in had Bright’s blood on it. They’d had it DNA tested. 

Those photographs were all they’d had. They still hadn’t found Bright’s body. Or his killer. 

JT tried to focus on the case Gil was explaining, knowing as well as the other man did that it was just something quick to take care of so they could still feel some vague sense of accomplishment as cops, placate the higher-ups, before they’d get back to finding the bastard who’d killed Bright. 

Almost a month, now. Three weeks since that envelope had arrived at the precinct. 23 days. 

He could have been missing for up to a week before that, before the photos had arrived. They hadn’t had a case for a while, and Bright had seemed, by his standards, fine, and none of them had _checked_ —

Unimportant case closed, they sat round the table, staring at the wall of evidence so familiar by now that JT was sure he could replicate it perfectly behind his eyelids. A different photo of Malcolm, still in an expensive suit, still with that awkward smile, a photocopy of those fucking Polaroids. None of the rest of it meant anything. Theories that hadn’t checked out. Wasted time.

“Why Bright,” Gil asked, voice cracking, for what had to be about the hundredth time. “Why take him, why send us the photos, why haven’t we heard anything from the bastard since?”

There was a sick irony to it— JT was sure Bright himself would have been able to solve this easily, present them with a neat little profile. 

But he was gone, and they couldn’t even do him the honour of finding his fucking corpse. 

Tally was worried about JT, he knew, and he didn’t know what to do with that because there were so many people more deserving of that worry than him. Bright himself, for one. His family. The rest of the team, who had actually been _nice_ to the scrawny little profiler. 

Gil has gotten visibly older, with everything that had happened. Edrisa was a lot less chirpy. Dani looked exhausted, all the time. She had Bright’s bird now, JT remembered. Maybe it was keeping her up. Or maybe she was just a better person than he was, and spent her nights tossing and turning. 

JT couldn’t even manage a few nightmares or sleepless nights in Bright’s memory. He fell asleep the second his head touched the pillows, his only dreams a blurry, confused mess he’d forgotten half an hour after waking up. 

JT wondered if he looked any different after Bright’s death. Probably just sadder. 

Going on five weeks, now. 

“I might have something,” said Dani, sounding almost surprised at herself. None of them looked hopeful— it would be nothing, it always was. But it would pass the time, if nothing else. Be another thing they could tack on the wall in an attempt to convince someone that they knew what they were doing, that they should still be on the case. 

She cleared her throat. “Um, an unidentified male showed up at a hospital in New Jersey, his throat—” she paused, looked up at them apologetically— “his throat slit in the same way Bright’s was. Straight across and about four inches.”

“So what, he’s a serial killer now?” Gil said, voice heavy with loathing. 

JT blinked. 

“You said hospital— Dani, is this guy still alive?”

Dani shrugged. 

“Apparently. I couldn’t get specifics over the phone, but it’s the best lead we’ve got.”

“It’s the only lead we’ve got.” Gil stood up, chair scraping behind him. “Come on. Let’s go pay him a visit.”

“So the vic gets his throat slit, and he’s fine?” JT stared at the doctor in front of him with a healthy dose of scepticism. 

She peered at her clipboard. 

“Well. The cut was too shallow to damage the windpipe, although the left carotid artery was nicked. This would have caused the patient to bleed out, only the cut was stitched closed.”

“He cuts someone’s throat, and then stitches it right up afterwards?” Gil repeated, incredulous, and JT knew with a pang that if Bright were here, he’d be able to explain exactly what this said about the killer’s psyche. All JT had was a deep sense of this being fucked up. 

“ _Right_ afterwards,” the doctor confirmed. “In under five minutes, if he didn’t want to risk the patient bleeding out. And it’s done well— he would have had to use clamps for the carotid— this is someone with medical expertise.”

“Sound like any other creepy serial killers we know?” Dani asked, and JT didn’t miss the worried glance she shot at Gil, who looked ready to hit something. Or someone. 

“Can you give us a minute?” JT asked the doctor, who nodded as he led Gil into a corner. “Boss. You good?” 

“In that bastard’s sick way, I think he really did love Malcolm,” Gil said quietly. “I hope he did. I hope he’s suffering.”

“O-kay,” JT said. “Are you sure you want to be here? Me and Dani can handle this.”

Gil shook his head brusquely. 

“I’m fine. Let’s go speak to our vic.”

Dani shot JT a look. He just grimaced in response. The two of them had lost a co-worker who had edged irritatingly close to becoming a friend. Gil had lost a son. JT knew fine well he’d barely slept in a month, was pushing his body as far as it could go in a useless attempt to punish himself for failing Bright. He was drinking too much, too, but then it would’ve been hypocritical of JT to judge him on that count. JT was worried about him, annoyed that he was worried, and even more annoyed that he had no idea how to help. If this was even a situation where anyone could do much to help. 

Gil turned on his heel and strode back to the doctor. 

“Can we go see him?”

“He may not be awake yet— he was in quite a state when he arrived, we’re running a blood test now to see if he was drugged— and we think there may be some vocal cord damage, although we’ll have to wait for him to wake up to see how extensive it is.”

“We can wait,” Gil said gruffly. “He can write things on a notepad if need be.”

The doctor nodded, and led the way to a private room, wisely choosing to stay outside and not get more involved than absolutely necessary with police business. 

Gil made it about two steps into the room before he froze, blocking the doorway. 

“Malcolm,” he breathed out. 

“Gil,” Dani said carefully. “Boss. I know this is difficult—”

Gil moved towards the bed without even acknowledging that she’d spoken. Dani and JT exchanged another worried look, and followed him in. 

JT peered over at the occupant of the hospital bed, small and wan, still unconscious like the doctor had thought. Swore. Blinked, rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing properly.

Swore again. 

There, in the bed, was unmistakably Malcolm Bright. 

He looked like shit. 

The most obvious thing was the line slashing across his throat, red and thick and held together by ugly black stitches. Beyond that, he was eerily pale, bruises standing out against sallow skin, most notably round his wrists and tracing one cheekbone. He’d lost weight, too, and his hair was a tangled mess that JT knew the profiler would have resented, had he been awake. 

But he was alive, for all that. Alive. JT couldn’t quite help the stupid smile that slid over his face. 

Gil half collapsed into one of the chairs by the bed, eyes fixed resolutely on Bright’s still form. JT wasn’t entirely sure if he’d blinked yet. 

He went and sat next to him, Dani doing the same on Gil’s other side. 

There was a stunned sort of silence. 

“He’s _alive_ ,” Gil got out, voice rasping. “Oh, god—”

He started to cry. 

“Hey, boss, it’s okay,” JT said awkwardly. “We found him, and he’s alive.”

“I left him,” Gil said. “Some bastard had him for over a month, and the only reason we didn’t have a funeral is because we couldn’t find a damn _body_.”

“You saw the same photos I did. There was no way for us to know.” JT sighed. “And even if you had known, there’s no way we could have looked harder. You know that.”

JT wasn’t entirely sure if he was trying to convince himself or Gil. He knew he cared more about Gil believing it than him. 

“The doctor said vocal cord damage. If he can’t… he stopped talking, after The Surgeon was arrested. Didn’t say anything for months. ”

“It’ll be fine,” Dani cut him off resolutely. “The important thing is that he’s alive. But if it does come to that,” she shrugged, “I’ve been meaning to learn ASL for ages. We can do team lessons,” she said with a grin. 

“If we’re doing damn team sign lessons, Bright _will_ be found dead,” JT said earnestly. 

“He might still know some from back then,” Gil said, with something that sounded almost like hope.

“Even better,” said Dani.

Gil gave a small, tired smile. His first in five weeks. 

“Thank you. Both of you. For getting me through this.”

“We’re a team,” Dani said. “It’s what we do.”

JT cleared his throat. 

“But if you do feel guilty— which you shouldn’t”, he added quickly, at a glare from Dani, “you can be the one to call Jessica Whitly.”

Gil put his head in his hands. 

“Oh, _Jesus_.”


	2. Gil

There were practical things to do, which kept Gil busy for a while. Busy was good, busy meant he didn’t have to process any of this, which was such a _Malcolm_ thing to think that it hurt. But he found the doctor, told her Malcolm’s name, his thing against sedatives, and gave her the list of his meds— all of which, it was just sinking in, Malcolm had been without for the last five weeks. 

She told him they’d found ketamine in Malcolm’s system, and Gil’s stomach dropped. Another link to the surgeon. 

When she left, he gave himself one minute. One minute to stand there, in a quiet corner of a hospital corridor. One minute to breathe, and calm himself down. 

Then he called Jessica. 

She picked up instantly. She always did, these days. 

“Gil? Oh, God, have you found him?”

Gil took a deep breath. 

“Jessica—”

She let out a low moan. 

“My _son_ —”

“Jessica, he’s alive.”

The line went dead silent for a moment. Gil thought he heard a faint sniffle. 

“I’ll be right there.”

True to her word, Gil heard the distinctive click of Jessica’s heels come down the hospital corridor faster than should have been possible— traffic laws didn’t apply to Adolpho.

Jessica looked impeccable. As always. The tabloids had given her hell for it, seen it as an admission of guilt, but Gil thought it was a defense mechanism. Something to control, even when everything else was spiralling. 

Christ. Now he was even profiling like Malcolm. 

Jessica caught sight of him. Her face tightened.

“Where is he? Is he all right?”

Gil led her to the hospital room. 

“He’s hurt, but— he’s _alive_ , Jess.” A month’s worth of grief and exhaustion bled out into the word. “He’s alive. He’ll be fine.”

“He’ll be fine,” she repeated, slightly shrilly, and in they went. 

They just sat there, for a while. Dani and JT had tactfully left them to it, and so the room was quiet, Jessica staring at Malcolm as if he could disappear again at any moment. 

“Ainsley?” Gil asked, more to break the silence than anything else.

“At work,” said Jessica curtly. “She’ll be here as soon as she can.” She sighed, looked back down at her son. “I was looking at funeral homes this morning,” she said quietly, not making eye contact, not looking at anything but Malcolm, the cut on his neck. “You told me my son was _dead_. For five weeks— you let me think that—”

“You saw the same photographs I did,” Gil said. She had stormed into the precinct and refused to leave until she had seen those damn Polaroids. He sighed. Tried to hold back more tears. 

“I’m sorry. I should have found him earlier. I should have kept him safe.”

“You should have,” she said sharply, then went quiet. “Have you told _him_ yet?”

Gil didn’t need to ask who she meant. 

“Not yet. Thought I’d drag it out.” He looked back at Malcolm’s throat, the thick stitches, thought about Malcolm drugged and alone. “Let the bastard suffer.”

Jessica gave a small, cold smile.

“I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

The silence that followed was something closer to companionable. Jess reached out and gently smoothed down Malcolm’s hair, wheeling back to face Gil as a new thought occurred to her, dangly earrings swaying as she moved. 

“Have you caught him? The monster who took my son?” she asked. Gil swallowed. 

“Not yet. We’ll get him.”

Jessica turned to face him, eyes blazing. 

“You want to keep Malcolm safe? Keep him away from it. Promise me. I know him, he’ll want to—” she gestured vaguely— “profile, and get involved, and rush right back into danger. I need you to stop him.”

Gil looked down at Malcolm, small and still in the hospital bed. The boy he loved like a son. He nodded. 

“I’ll keep him safe. I promise.”

Jessica gave a small nod in return. As they sat there, watching Malcolm, she quietly slid her hand into Gil’s.

Gil held it tight and wondered how on earth he was going to keep Malcolm Bright away from a case.

It was a few hours before Malcolm slowly, blearily, clawed his way back into consciousness, eyes blinking open with a soft gasp. Jessica and Gil were at his side in an instant. 

“Hey kid,” Gil said gently. “You good?”

Malcolm opened his mouth. All that came out was a pained rasping noise. 

“You don’t have to talk if it hurts,” Gil said, trying to inject a sense of calm into his voice. “Do you remember what happened?”

Malcolm raised a hand to his throat, wincing slightly, his eyes slowly coming into focus. He looked— confused, concerned, but aware. It was stupid, but some of the tension in the pit of Gil’s stomach uncoiled itself. It was still _Malcolm._ Still his kid. His kid, staring at him with an increasing amount of panic on his face, clearly with no idea of where he was. 

“Malcolm,” Gil said carefully. “You’re safe, kid. We’ve got you.” 

Malcolm looked at Gil with a kind of analytical nervousness. Gil had woken him up from enough night terrors to know what that look meant: it was Malcolm trying to figure out if what he was seeing was real. 

“ _Kid_ ,” said Gil, gently placing his hand over Malcolm’s. Something in the profiler’s face crumpled at the contact, and something in Gil’s chest snapped along with it. 

“It’s okay,” Gil repeated, pulling Malcolm into a hug as gently as he could manage. “We’ve got you.”

“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” Jessica said from behind him, a light edge of hysteria still clinging to her voice, but with enough of her usual comfortable haughtiness that Gil knew she felt the same way. “I thought you were _dead_ , Malcolm. I had to actually have a conversation with your father, can you imagine?”

That caught Malcolm’s attention, fuzzy eyes widening, disentangling himself from Gil as he attempted to pull himself up into some sort of sitting position, staring round at his surroundings. 

Gil could see the disoriented mess of questions playing on Malcolm’s face, unable to find an outlet. He didn’t think getting a still potentially drugged-up Bright to try and remember his 20-year old ASL was a particularly good idea, so instead he pulled out his police notebook and pen and gently pushed them into Bright’s hands. 

_How long?_ Bright scrawled, in his familiar small, spidery handwriting. 

“Five weeks,” Gil said awkwardly, his own failure bitter in his throat. “Kid—”

Malcolm was writing again. 

_How did you find me?_

Gil frowned. 

“We didn’t,” he said, and the confusion and vague disappointment that flitted across Malcolm’s face made him feel even worse. “You found us, kid. Showed up here. You don’t remember that?”

Malcolm shook his head, blinking slowly. 

Jessica cleared her throat loudly. 

“Let’s leave the police work to one side, shall we?” She reached out and squeezed Malcolm’s hand. “It’s just good to have you back,” Jessica said earnestly, her smile wobbling ever so slightly. “And I have five weeks worth of socialite gossip to catch you up on.”

Malcolm rolled his eyes, but smiled fondly, and Gil let himself relax ever so slightly. God help him, this might just be all right. 

The grin on Dani’s face when she came back in to find Malcolm awake was huge, and even JT couldn’t quite hide his only slightly smaller one. The next few hours were Gil’s happiest in a long time: Ainsley flying in and hugging her brother as if she’d never let go, JT playing tic tac toe with Malcolm on Gil’s notepad and swearing loudly when he lost, Dani and Jessica falling asleep with their heads on each other’s shoulders on the crappy hospital chairs as five weeks of grief and exhaustion bled out. Malcolm watched it all with a slightly dazed expression on his face. 

And then, once long enough had passed that they were sure all the ketamine was out of Malcolm’s system, the doctor announced that they wanted to put Malcolm under, to take out the stitches that bastard had put in and check that everything was healing okay.

Gil knew Malcolm didn’t like being sedated. He got it. But the look of sheer terror on the kid’s face…

That was new.

Gil wondered how many times that bastard had used ketamine. Thought of Malcolm, drugged and alone. 

He was so _angry_ , these days. With whatever monster that had taken Malcolm, with The Surgeon, whose fault it almost certainly was, with the doctors and the drugs that weren’t going to be able to fix whatever new night terrors Bright was going to get from this. With himself, most of all.

A burning, white-hot loathing. 

It scared him. But the bastard who’d taken Malcolm was still out there, and Gil thought that maybe he could use it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! xx


	3. Dani

Bright signed himself out of hospital the second he could. Because of course he did. 

“You still look like shit,” Dani said, in what she hoped was a positive and encouraging tone. Bright gave her a wan thumbs-up. 

He did, though. The bags under his eyes were as dark as she’d ever seen them, and his skin was so pale it was almost grey. It looked like he’d never made up for all the blood he’d lost in those damn photos. 

Those _fucking_ photos. 

He’d taken to wearing a selection of turtleneck sweaters with a high enough neckline to hide the scar, but she knew it was still there, red and angry. Difficult to forget when the image of Malcolm with his throat slit felt like it had been burned into her retinas, there every time she blinked. 

Some of her fear must have leaked onto her face, because Malcolm came and sat across from her at the kitchen counter— movements still stiff but getting better— and placed his hand over hers. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” he said earnestly. 

That would have been a lot more convincing, Dani thought glumly, if Bright’s voice had been anything more than a hoarse, quiet rasp. If he didn’t look like he was going to snap in half all the time. 

“Really,” he said, with a flat attempt at a smile. “Just need a haircut, s’all.”

Dani looked at Bright’s limp mess of hair, longer and definitely more unkempt than usual. 

“I don’t know.” She grinned. “Maybe you should grow it out. I’m excited for the Malcolm Bright manbun.”

Bright raised his eyebrows in an _aren’t you funny_ sort of way, but didn’t say anything. Dani felt a sour sort of guilt every time she got him to talk: it was a reminder of how they’d all failed him, and also just sounded like it _hurt._ The damage to his vocal cords would heal. Probably. But for now, until Dani managed to figure out ASL, it was this or radio silence. Or Malcolm’s totally illegible handwriting, which only Gil could figure out. 

Either way, Dani didn’t think Bright should be stuck in his own head, so painful, croaking speech it was. He was so _quiet_ now, weighing up words carefully, not saying things he didn’t need to. It didn’t suit him.

Dani remembered with a sudden jolt that she still had that photo of Malcolm in her wallet. She’d need to remove that, before those profiler’s eyes could catch sight of it. It was a weird thing to have, she’d admit, but she’d just needed a different photo to look at to get the image of those bloody polaroids out of her mind, something more real, tangible than a photo on her phone. A different way to remember him. 

And now here Bright was, and those polaroids still danced in front of her vision at every turn. It was a strange feeling, sitting across the table from her dead friend. A friend who Dani had mourned, and cried for. They might not have found Bright’s body, but in her head, Dani had buried the profiler weeks ago. 

But here he was. In the flesh. Still sounding— and looking— more like a ghost than anything. 

“You sleeping?” Dani asked. Bright raised his eyebrows as if to say _do I ever?_ , but shook back his sleeves to show Dani the fading bruises that still mottled his wrists in ugly shades of yellow and green. 

“Don’t want to use the restraints,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “So…” he shrugged.

Dani looked back at Malcolm’s bruised wrists, wincing in sympathy, struck, not for the first time, by just how little she knew about what had happened to Malcolm. Gil had told her that Malcolm couldn’t remember how he’d gotten from wherever he was being held to the hospital, but other than that… 

They’d need to take a statement at some point, Dani knew, needed to make sure that they actually caught the bastard, but none of the team particularly wanted to remind Malcolm of what had happened when he still seemed liable to shatter at any minute. Gil had also quietly stressed that they were trying to keep Malcolm away from work for a while, instead of dragging him back in— and seeing the profiler’s restless energy battling with his clear exhaustion, mental and physical, made Dani wonder just how long they were going to be able to hold him off. 

They sat in nervous silence for a while. Dani let her gaze flit around Malcolm’s apartment, eyes catching on empty space. 

“Oh— I completely forgot— that’s why I’m here in the first place— I’ve still got Sunshine. You think you’re good to have her back?” 

Malcolm’s face lit up. He nodded vigorously, then winced, putting his hand to his neck, but all with a massive smile on his face. 

The fact that he was so happy at the idea of seeing his bird again that he didn’t even raise an eyebrow at Dani’s obviously bullshit excuse for coming to visit him broke her heart a little bit. But if it got Malcolm to smile, right now Dani would take it. She pulled her face into a grin.

“I’ll bring her round tomorrow, then.” Good. Then she had another excuse to check on him. 

Malcolm nodded again. Dani looked at her friend, the smile that was already starting to slip, and sighed. 

“Bright, you sure you’re good?”

She could see him plaster on another too-tight smile, could see him gear up for another “I’m fine” that he couldn’t possibly mean. 

And then Dani watched something in Malcolm’s expression crack, watched that smile crumple. 

“What if I killed him, Dani?” He said in that broken, ghostly voice, so quiet that Dani wasn’t sure she’d heard him properly. 

“What?”

“What if I killed him?” Malcolm asked again, desperation leaking through. “And that’s why I can’t remember?” 

“Oh, Bright,” Dani said softly. “Malcolm. If you killed him— and that’s a big if— I mean— you were drugged, you were off your meds, and that bastard took you. For five weeks. I thought you were _dead_ , I thought I was actually never going to see him again, I—” 

It took a moment to realise she was crying. Dani sniffed, awkwardly wiped the tears away with her sleeve. Tried to ignore the concern on Malcolm’s face. 

“What I’m trying to say,” Dani said, somewhat tearily, “is that I missed you, and I care about you, and nothing you could’ve done will change that.” They looked at each other for a long, quiet moment. “You’re not your dad, Malcolm,” Dani said eventually. 

“Oh,” said Malcolm, slightly faintly, as if the thought had never occurred to him before. He stared down at the kitchen floor as though it hid all the secrets in the universe, and then said, very softly, “I missed you too.”

Dani sniffled. 

“Give me a hug, idiot,” she said, moving over to him and spreading her arms wide. Malcolm wrapped his arms around her and she held him tight, feeling how warm and indelibly alive he was. 

They’d get through this. Eventually. For now, Dani was content to just hold her friend and not let go. 


	4. Malcolm

His dad had started calling. 

Someone— he had to assume Ainsley; he didn’t think anyone else would have cared enough to bother— had clearly told him Malcolm was alive. 

Malcolm, for his part, was very resolutely not picking up. 

Speaking _hurt_ , for one, sent red lines of pain screaming down his throat, and he really didn’t think the weak whisper of his voice could manage a phone call. More than that, he could just about admit to himself, he really, desperately did not want to speak to his father. His father, who was responsible for every shit thing that had ever happened to him— every night terror, every breakdown, every beating he’d taken at school. Every kidnapping. And Malcolm couldn’t even find the energy to despise him for it, because he was so busy despising him for, you know, murdering 23 people. Minimum. 

Malcolm sighed, slumping down onto his sofa and ignoring the lingering stiffness of his bruised body. 

This was the first time, in the two weeks since he’d gotten back from _there_ , that he was properly alone. They’d all hovered over him at first (which meant that the whole team had now seen his flat, Edrisa with high-pitched admiration and JT with bemused judgement), but eventually everyone had to go back to work. Barring his mother, of course, but much as Malcolm loved her, any more prolonged time alone together and they would drive each other mad. 

He knew he could call any of his team, his family, he _knew_ that, but if he couldn’t even manage something as simple as being alone in his apartment, he definitely couldn’t go back to work anytime soon. 

Malcolm could do this. He was fine. 

He just couldn’t stand the _quiet_. 

He put on music, loud as it could go— Wham, ABBA, anything, so long as it was happy enough and loud enough to drown out the rushing silence in his head. Tried to sing along for about two seconds before his throat gave out in an electric spike of pain and he remembered just what a stupid idea that was. 

It still wasn’t enough. Mentally thanking his mother for the soundproofing number she’d done on the apartment, Malcolm turned on his TV, flicked over to some banal panel show and turned the volume up as high as it could go, wittering voices mixing in with cheesy pop into a cacophony of sound. 

The sound of normal voices, normal talking seemed to calm him down, though, and Malcolm filed that information away for later reference. 

Malcolm closed his eyes, let the noise overwhelm his thoughts, and took a deep breath. He was safe. He was home. He wasn’t _there_. And if the wall of sound he’d built around him happened to block out any unwanted phone calls, then that was just an added advantage.

Somewhere behind him, sunshine trilled out a song, clearly unimpressed by his behaviour, and Malcolm even managed to crack out a small smile. Clearly, he wasn’t as alone as he’d thought. 

Malcolm managed to sit at home for an entire week, with enough trashy reality TV on for background noise that he’d managed to build up a profile for each of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. He’d caught up on five weeks’ worth of news (mainly politics and high-society gossip, to play it safe), read some books, even managed to get a few hours of sleep in there somewhere.

Someone would text him roughly every thirty minutes, so regularly that it wouldn’t have surprised Malcom if they had some sort of schedule established. Just to check that he was still there, still going. 

He wasn’t sure how to deal with that— their pity and grief. But Malcom hated it, hated the guilt on Gil’s face every time he looked at him, and didn’t want to do anything to exacerbate it. So, for a week he sat at home, texted back, acted like a model patient. Until he just _couldn’t_ anymore. 

Malcolm’s bruises and aches subsided, and he took to nervously pacing around his apartment, trying to get the excess energy out. He was bored, sick of his flat, but more than that he was suddenly, nauseatingly aware of the fact that the man who’d taken him was still out there, still at large. Malcolm considered his own well-being in a very distant, hazy way— he couldn’t think properly about what getting dragged back to that dingy basement where he’d been shackled to the ground would do to him, or he’d shatter— but the idea that his kidnapper would find a replacement, that _somebody else could be getting hurt because of him_ , because he was too fragile to go back to work or even give a witness statement…

Well, that was if Malcolm hadn’t killed him. That was a concept he could think about even less directly. 

Malcolm shook his head as though to clear it, shrugged on a silver blazer over his black turtleneck sweater. Not a suit, but it would have to do. 

Twenty minutes later, he was strolling up to the doors of the precinct. 

JT took one look at him, and let out a deep, world-weary sigh. 

“Dude. No. Go home, Bright.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Malcolm insisted, doing his best to ignore the way JT winced at the raspy sound of his voice. “Look, you need to close this case, I…” his voice, unsteady as it was, faltered for a second, “I really need you to catch this guy, so just let me give my witness statement and I’ll go home and stay out of it, okay? I promise.”

JT’s eyes softened. Malcolm squirmed uncomfortably— the pity was bad enough coming from Dani or Gil, but felt so out of place on JT that Malcom didn’t quite know what to do with it. But he’d take it right now, if it got him what he wanted. 

JT sighed and relented, leading him to Gil’s office. 

“Just the statement, all right? Then you stay out of it.”

“Fine,” said Malcolm brusquely, following the taller man’s lead. 

The rest of the team wasn’t thrilled to see him either, but they acquiesced: they had to close the case some time, after all. Before long they were all assembled around the table, all eyes on Malcolm. 

“Right,” said Gil finally, breaking the tense silence. “How… how are we doing this?”

Malcolm cleared his throat nervously. 

“Um. Okay. So, incredibly, I wasn’t in top profiler mode.” This came out tinged with slightly more bitterness than he’d intended. “So, I’ll just… tell you what happened, and we can reverse engineer a profile from there. Okay?”

They nodded. Malcolm took a deep breath. 

“Okay. I was getting food for Sunshine when it happened— it was late, getting dark, and the pet shop’s kind of out of the way. He, uh, grabbed me, injected me with something, ketamine I assume, and I passed out.” Malcolm took a breath, very studiously avoided making any eye contact, and pressed on. “Um, so, given that there was no way he could have known that I’d be going to that shop at that time, and given that he wanted to get me specifically, I’d say he’d been following me around for a few days beforehand.” His already hoarse voice wavered, and Gil handed him a glass of water which Malcolm accepted gratefully, still not looking at any of them. “I woke up shackled to the ground in his basement, tried to profile him, he didn’t like that. He drugged all the water, so between that and being off my meds, I was pretty out of it, hallucinating a lot— he _really_ didn’t like that. That’s when he, uh…”

Malcolm trailed off, and gestured vaguely at his throat, which was in agony by now. He was well aware of the fact that this was the most he’d spoken in almost two months. He opened his mouth to continue in spite of it all, but nothing came out, his voice having abandoned him completely. He could see Gil furrowing his brow, probably about to tell him to take a break, but Malcolm felt consumed by the sudden urge to get it _out_ , get it done, tell the others and then not have to think about it ever again. 

He started to sign. Gil sighed, but translated for Dani and JT. 

_I never got a name. He’s tall, six foot two maybe, brown hair and eyes. I don’t think he wanted to hurt me_ — Gil’s voice wavered over this, but he pressed on— _he just wants control. He’s obsessed with the surgeon, used the same kind of scalpel, clearly has medical expertise. He’s looking for a sense of power he can’t find in other aspects of his life. Probably divorced. Check for any doctors who’ve been fired for malpractice recently._

His hand was shaking badly by the time he finished, but Gil understood. He always did. 

He sighed, looked at Malcolm with those sad, sad eyes. The four of them fell into a strange, tense silence that set Malcolm’s nerves on edge. 

Dani cleared her throat nervously. 

“He, uh, sent us some photos. Of you. It was why we thought…” she trailed off awkwardly. “I just thought you should know. For the profile.”

Malcolm blinked, bile rising up his throat. 

_Can I see?_

He didn’t even know why he’d asked, really— morbid curiosity? — but he accepted the polaroids from Dani, his tremor rustling the plastic evidence bag. 

He took it in bit by bit, the chair, the tape, the blood, his own limp form. 

He looked _dead_. 

He’d felt dead, for those five weeks. Almost wished he was, in the rare moments when he was lucid enough to want anything. Mainly, though, it had been hallucinations and fear, cold shackles round his wrists and burning pain at his throat. 

Malcolm stared at the photos in silence for a long time. He thought he could understand Dani’s clinginess, Gil’s anger, his mother’s sadness just a bit more. 

“Jesus, kid,” Gil said softly, after they’d sat in silence for a good five minutes. 

“It’s fine,” Malcolm said, relieved to find he had a voice to say it with, even if it was little more than a whisper. 

“No, dude, it’s not,” JT said softly, with that same out of place pity in his eyes. 

“No,” Malcolm agreed, slightly shakily. “But— can we pretend it is? Just for a little bit?”

He looked back at the photos— _blood, drugs, pain, fear_ — and felt nauseous. The idea of turning that into a workable profile felt absurd. He half-staggered to his feet. 

“‘M gonna get some fresh air,” he just about got out, and was out of the room before they could stop him. 

Malcolm only stopped once he’d reached the car park, half doubling over as he took a series of deep, shuddering breaths. He did his best to ignore the burn in his throat and the corresponding ache in his chest that had no such physical cause, doing his best to get his breathing under control. 

Malcolm got up slowly, once he was calm or at least able to pretend he was, ready to go back into the precinct and get this damn profile finished. 

And froze. 

There, at his neck, was the cold and sickly familiar bite of a scalpel. 

Malcolm turned his head as much as he dared, and found the face of his kidnapper staring back at him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading!


	5. Edrisa

If there was one thing Edrisa knew, it was corpses. 

Corpses were _important_. 

And while she by no means wanted to have to identify her friend’s body, dissect it— she’d had screaming nightmares about it, actually— in many ways Malcolm officially just being missing, presumed dead was worse. A body meant closure, meant the person could be laid to rest in a dignified way, meant the family could have a funeral to communalise their grief. 

If the body ended up on Edrisa’s table first, it was usually a step towards getting them justice. 

In this case, of course, she’d been overjoyed not to get a corpse, sat and sobbed and let it all out because Malcolm was okay, he was alive. 

But Edrisa’s _job_ was corpses. And while she’d never been quite so glad not to have one, that had meant that she’d been functionally useless in trying to find her friend or his captor, hovering awkwardly on the outskirts. 

She never felt like an outsider with Bright around— he understood Edrisa, her nervous energy and nerdy humour. He didn’t just make her feel like a morbid freak, and she loved him for that. 

In a platonic way. Honestly. 

Well, mostly platonic. 

Point being, though, that her friend had been in trouble, her friend had needed help, and she hadn’t been able to give it. And still wasn’t able to give it, because Bright clearly wasn’t okay. 

Edrisa sighed, lost in her thoughts as she scurried through the car park and back to the precinct after taking an unreasonably long lunch break— no current pressing cases meant no corpses to rush back to. 

And that was when her eye caught on something, glinting in the light. Edrisa turned around, breaking into a smile as she caught sight of Bright. That smile disappeared rapidly as she took in the distinctly unfriendly-looking man behind him. It turned into a small, serious frown as she located the source of the glinting in the knife the man held pressed to Malcolm’s throat.

Edrisa squinted closer: no, not a knife. A scalpel. 

She didn’t think the man had seen her yet: Edrisa ducked behind the nearest cop car, heart racing, bile rising in her throat. This wasn’t— couldn’t they just give her a nice corpse to examine? She could handle that. She had no idea what to do here. 

Okay. She had to get help. Okay. She fumbled for her phone, pulled it out her pocket with shaky hands. 

She didn’t dare call, in case the man heard her, but she fired off a series of texts to Dani, JT, and Gil at once, praying that one of them would notice and check their phone. 

_911!!!_

_im in the parking lot and there’s a man with a knife to brights throat_

_i think its his kidnapper_

_help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

Edrisa sat back against the car, doing her best to blink back tears. What was happening? Was it already too late? If this was what all her frustrated wishes for a corpse to analyse led to…

Edrisa shook her head as though to clear it, then, as quietly as possible, turned around and straightened up enough to peek through the car window at what was going on. 

Bright was still alive. Edrisa let out a quiet sigh of relief, the tight knot of anxiety in her stomach loosening just slightly. He was porcelain-doll pale, hand shaking. Edrisa could see that he was saying something to his captor, but given the distance between them and how fragile Bright’s voice was at the minute, she couldn’t make out what. 

Edrisa loved and admired Bright, thought his profiling was borderline genius, but realistically, he hadn’t managed to talk this man down in the last five weeks, and she was doubtful he’d be able to now. She bit her lip, watched nervously through the window. 

She saw the exact moment the man’s face contorted with rage, as he started to drag Malcolm away— to one of the cars, Edrisa had to assume, and then back off into nothing. 

Nonononono. This couldn’t happen _again._ They’d only just gotten him back. Edrisa fired off another row of urgent exclamation marks to the others, took a deep breath, and stood up. 

“HEY!”

The man whirled round to face her, as did Bright, horror clear on his face. 

Edrisa pointed a definitely-not-shaking finger at Bright’s captor. 

“Let my friend go, asshole!” 

The man stared at her, as if he was unsure of how to proceed. Which was fair enough, because Edrisa had no idea what she was going to do next, either. 

“The police are coming!” She said, with just a slight touch of hysteria. “And they’ll— get you! So you should run away. Very quickly!”

Again, the man just stared. And then he seemed to come to some sort of conclusion about the level of threat presented by Edrisa, grinned, and continued to drag Malcolm off. 

She stared at Bright, the scalpel at his throat, stricken.

A few thoughts raced through Edrisa’s mind in quick succession: this man, whatever his motives, had not killed Bright in the five weeks he’d had him. Had gone to great lengths not to, actually. Hadn’t killed him now, either. Was probably going to kidnap him again, though. And Edrisa really, really didn’t want to lose her friend again. 

She took a deep breath. And then, with an exhale that turned into a scream, Edrisa ran at the kidnapper. 

He turned back to her, momentarily stunned. But her gamble paid off: instead of digging it into Malcolm’s throat, he swung the scalpel in Edrisa’s direction. Which did have the minor disadvantage of leaving her with a knife pointed in her direction, and something about the glint in the man’s eyes told Edrisa that whatever it was that made him want to keep Bright alive probably didn’t apply to her. 

She froze, but Malcolm used the man’s distraction to smash his head back against the kidnapper’s face, wincing slightly as they collided with a distinct _crunch_ and blood began pouring from the man’s nose, as he bellowed with a mixture of pain and anger. 

Edrisa pushed forward, tried to wrangle the scalpel out of the man’s grip, vaguely aware of Malcolm beside her doing his best to break out of the man’s hold. She scrabbled blindly at his wrist, nails digging in, not entirely sure of what she was doing but knowing she had to do _something_. The blade flashed out, and Edrisa bit back a scream as it bit into the meat of her palm, blood welling up hot and slickly red, but didn’t let go, twisting at the scalpel even as it cut her. 

All she could see was the scalpel, bloody and glinting— everything else was just noise, Malcolm grunting as he thrashed against his captor’s hold. Then—

“NYPD! Drop your weapon!”

The scalpel suddenly, too easily, gave way. Edrisa unfocused her gaze and looked up at Malcolm, who was shaking like a leaf, hand still outstretched and knuckles split as he stared down at the prone form of his kidnapper, slumped on the ground. 

“You punched him?” Edrisa asked.

Malcolm nodded. They stared at each other in shell-shocked silence for a small eternity. The edge of the scar on Malcolm’s throat was visible over the top of his rumpled turtleneck, winking up at her in a rictus smile. 

Then he enveloped her in a hug. Edrisa squeezed back, feeling the warm bulk of him tremble against her and definitely getting blood on that nice silver jacket of his.

“Thank you,” he said earnestly, in that strange, raspy voice of his. “If he’d taken me back there— you saved my life, Edrisa.”

“Anytime,” she managed, in what she hoped was more or less a steady voice. 

They broke apart at the sound of footsteps, as the rest of the team showed up, guns drawn and faces tight as they took in the scene. 

“You good?” Gil asked, face tight with a worry that belied his casual tone. 

“Fine, thanks to Edrisa,” Malcolm said, a hint of his old bounciness creeping into his tone. He beamed at her. “That made _me_ look calm and rational. Are you okay?”

She aimed for a thumbs up, wincing as this sent a spike of pain through the cut on her palm, the adrenaline ebbing away. 

“Ooh. That is, uh, bleeding quite a bit, actually,” she mumbled. 

JT stepped past the two of them and swiftly cuffed the perp, pulling the half-conscious man up and off the ground. 

“This the bastard who took you?” he asked, with ill-disguised disgust. 

Malcolm nodded slightly shakily, stepping away from the man and towards Gil, who put a reassuring arm round his shoulders. 

“At least the precinct’s nice and close,” JT said. 

“ _Too_ close,” replied Gil. “Jesus, kid, he could’ve gotten you in our damn parking lot and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

Dani smiled at Edrisa. 

“Yeah, if you hadn’t let us know.” She gently took Edrisa’s bloody hand in hers. “Are you okay? This looks nasty, we might have to go and get it stitched up.”

The adrenaline was definitely beginning to fade now, and Edrisa could begin to feel the pain smarting up her arm. 

“Um. That might be a good idea, yeah,” she said. 

Dani nodded, then wheeled round to point a threatening finger at Malcolm. 

“You’re coming too, Bright.”

He raised his hands in defence. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” he said earnestly. “Not a scratch on me. Honestly.”

“Your knuckles look pretty bad,” Edrisa pointed out. 

“Not bad enough to warrant going to the _hospital_ ,” Malcolm said petulantly. 

“Yeah, well, if nothing else, it might stop you getting kidnapped for about five minutes,” said Dani. 

JT said he’d process the perp, and the rest of them piled into Gil’s car, Edrisa doing her level best not to get any blood on the nice leather seats. Malcolm’s hands were sort of starting to shake, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, and Dani was staring at them like she was trying very hard not to cry. 

So maybe Bright was still a little broken. Maybe they all were. But they were a _team_ , Edrisa thought contentedly, as she started out the window and watched New York fly by, and they’d be all right. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so so much for reading! :)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! title is from daniel, you're still a child by declan mckenna xx


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